Our Daughter's Russian Family

Happiness, Gratitude, Relief
by Jean Zaniewski
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© 2000, 2001
Reprinted with permission

Jean, Ken, Eric, and Ilka Elena on a beach outing.
Photo used with permission.

Our little girl, Ilka Elena, adopted at just under six months last July, had her first birthday last week. We didn't have a big party, just immediate family and my parents. I don't suppose a one year old really understands much about birthdays, and gifts were certainly not needed so close to Christmas but we did have a homemade cake with a big red candle.

Sitting in the dining room with the cake, we couldn't help smiling as Ilka kept toddling through, waving as she passed by on her circuits around the first floor of our house. A great imitator, when she saw her brother puffing at the candle, she tried her best to blow it out too. As I watched, my feelings, probably predictably enough, were happiness, gratitude, and relief.

Then I noticed my father who, at 80 and after a prostate cancer scare, lapses easily into the maudlin, crying. "What's the matter Dad?" I said sharply. He gasped out something like "Oh, she's so beautiful, you're so lucky... such good parents... but I feel so sorry - (unintelligible) - the other side! The other side!" There he goes relating everything back to himself again, talking about his death again, I thought, him being on "the other side" dead while we raise the family, I wish he'd stop that. A "knock it off" sort of reply to him flashed through my head, but I quashed it and felt good I did. I swear I've become more serene... well, less snappy..., since adopting.

Happiness, gratitude and relief are feelings that find you, sometimes long after, the time that you rightly made some sort of critical decision. The kind that you don't fully appreciate at the time how important it was. In our case, it was the decision to adopt late in 1999. Our son was almost three. More to the point, it had been a full year of grieving since the child after our son, a daughter, died within me when I was 7 1/2 months pregnant. After that, I finally "got over" enough fear (from ignorance or egocentric selfishness, mostly, I've since thought) and condescension ("oh, that's so nice of you to adopt someone else's mistake, but not for me," same reason, I'm ashamed to admit), about adoption to realize it was an answer. We wanted a child to love and become part of our family. It didn't have to be, it couldn't be, (but finally that didn't so important) our immediate genetic derivation.

We wanted a person. OK, we wanted a small baby person, reasonably healthy, and a girl if you please, and quickly! But the important thing was we realized the possibility of bringing any child home was a gift and an opportunity of parenthood, just as our son had been.

We were lucky. We started homestudy and INS application in Dec. '99, completed our dossier, with INS approval, by March, and received the referral. We adopted about a week after sending our dossier to the agency we chose. We traveled the day the baby was eligible to be "met" for foreign adoption, and returned to Russia two weeks later, July 5, to complete the adoption. We met kind and generous people, we did sightseeing, and we brought home a super, lovable, happy infant girl. Nothing was delayed, everything went like clockwork. There's not a day at home since that we haven't been happy with our decision.

And was it just a coincidence that we had a small pink granite marker with the name "Ellen Anne", our first daughter's name, carved on it, when we found out our baby's Russian name was "Elena"?

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